The making of ‘Bridesmaids’

NEW YORK — The director Paul Feig was in Manhattan recently on the day a blitz of ads for his new movie, “Bridesmaids,” materialized at bus stops and atop cabs, spattering fuchsia satin across the city.

The ads delighted him, but they also reminded him of the apprehension he felt while shooting this female buddy comedy about bridal party dynamics. “Bridesmaids,” which opens Friday, stars and was co-written by Kristen Wiig of “Saturday Night Live” and was produced by Judd Apatow, the filmmaker behind “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

“Because of Judd’s power with the studio we got to make a movie filled with women who are not A-list,” Feig says. “I kept thinking, ‘If I blow this, I’m going to ruin it for these women for years and years.’ ”

It felt like a tremendous amount of pressure — and that was before the blogosphere and onlookers at large dubbed “Bridesmaids” a ladies’ take on “The Hangover,” a film that won a Golden Globe, sparked a cache of catchphrases and grossed $462 million worldwide.

The chatter is understandable. Like “The Hangover,” “Bridesmaids” is an ensemble movie set around an impending wedding. And an early trailer for “Bridesmaids” implied that it would follow in that film’s raunchy, debaucherous footsteps to Las Vegas.

But “Bridesmaids” is not a female version of “The Hangover.” Nor, despite its title, is it a true wedding comedy in the vein of “27 Dresses.” Rather, as Feig puts it, it’s “a nervous-breakdown movie,” marked by a balance between outrageous comedy and emotional moments. And it was conceived in 2006 — three years before “The Hangover” came out. Apatow had just directed, and been incredibly impressed by, Wiig in a “Knocked Up” bit role as a boss.

“There was literally no part there at all,” Apatow says. “We just improvised on set. What shocked me in the test screenings was that on the first sentence out of her mouth, she got a gigantic laugh. The audience didn’t need to get to know her. They just loved her.”

Apatow told Wiig that if she wrote a movie for herself, he would produce it. She and her writing partner, Annie Mumolo, a fellow Groundlings alumna, pitched him an idea: A woman in a life slump becomes the maid of honor in her best friend’s wedding — and the de facto leader of an oddball band of bridesmaids.

Apatow was on board, but he held back until casting finally began in early 2010. “I try very hard not to develop movies too much until I have a cast,” Apatow says. “The cast brings the movie to life. And the reason ‘Bridesmaids’ works is that Kristen hired all of her friends, people she’d worked with before, so the chemistry is real. We did the same thing with ‘Knocked Up.’ ”

Wiig had previously worked with the ensemble’s Maya Rudolph, who plays the bride, as well as Wendi McLendon-Covey (from “Reno 911!”) and Melissa McCarthy (“Mike & Molly”), who play bridesmaids. Ellie Kemper (“The Office”) was the only comedic actor she hadn’t worked alongside. Rose Byrne, who rounds out the bridesmaids, functions as more of a straight woman. What’s more, Apatow and Feig collaborated on the television series “Freaks and Geeks.”

Having broken-in working relationships all around came in handy as, throughout preproduction and shooting, the script by Wiig and Mumolo changed again and again. “We basically did four and a half years of rewrites,” Wiig says. In her partner’s view a final script never truly existed. “It was just shooting the script version, shooting an improvised version, pitching jokes as we went, running jokes in as we were shooting,” Mumolo says. “There was no way to be precious in this process.”

With just weeks to go until filming began, Apatow told the writers that a sizable chunk of the movie — a bachelorette party sequence in Las Vegas — had to go. Guess what film was to blame?

“Judd just said Vegas has been done, ‘Hangover’ did it, and we don’t want to be the dead horse,” Mumolo says. “I was like: ‘I’m going to throw up. Something’s going on inside my body.’ ”

Wiig was more concerned about a scene Apatow wanted to tweak. The original version of a dress-shopping trip included Wiig’s character “fantasizing that she looks so good in this dress,” Mumolo says. ”We had a sequence like a perfume ad, with her drinking tea and Christian Bale brushing her hair.”

Instead, Apatow suggested, what if all the girls got food poisoning just beforehand — and scatological fireworks ensued at the bridal salon?

“I was so, so nervous about the dress shop scene, truthfully,” Wiig says. “I wasn’t sure it would fit with the rest of the movie. Judd said, ‘Let’s just try it.’ And now people really respond to it.”

Still, the film exudes a certain tension between laser-accurate, universal girl moments and over-the-top Apatowian comedy. (It seems easier to buy a bridal shower where puppies are the party favors when Apatow is selling it.) The filmmakers strove to make sure the two vibes complement each other rather than compete.

Mumolo says that Apatow encouraged “us to make everything bigger, to drive further and further from the real, emotional place we started from.”

The team struggled too with how to package a movie that’s not really about women and weddings after all. Feig says, “A lot of angst went into whether it should be called ‘Bridesmaids.’ ” At one point he pushed for the title to be “Single.”

“It’s not a wedding movie,” Rudolph says. “The wedding is the backdrop. I have a girlfriend who says that every woman needs a wife. That’s how important it is to have other females in your life. That’s what we wanted to talk about.”